Projects

The main goal of this project is to develop a low-cost multiuser collaborative platform for advanced training in settings like Architecture, Medicine or scientific simulation. The platform will extend an existing Collaborative Virtual Environment (MOVE) in order to provide advanced interaction and visualization with immersive virtual reality 3D devices like Head Mounted Displays, gloves and stereoscopic projection systems. We will also experiment with augmented reality systems in mobile scenarios in order to generate improved training contents for the selected disciplines.

Next generation collaborative systems will offer the mobile users seamless and natural collaboration amongst a diversity of agents within distributed, knowledge-rich and virtualised working environment. However this ambitious goal needs to face numerous challenges from the underlying communication infrastructure through to the high level application services which, depending on the operational need to address, can receive different answers both technological and scientific.

When most of the currently available tools supporting collaboration are based on a rigid client-server architecture and rely on a communication infrastructure like the Internet, POPEYE’ ambition is to get collaborative working free from such constraints, i.e. in an infrastructure-less environment.

P2PGRID: Self-adjusting P2P and Grid Systems

P2PGRID project is focused on the design of innovative large scale distributed systems, decentralized, able to adapt to complex environments – in terms of infrastructure or use- and heterogeneous in the access to communication and computation resources.

A key goal is the use of economic algorithms in order to create a Grid infrastructure with efficient resource allocation mechanisms. It is thus necessary the study, design, and evaluation of resource allocation algorithms in distributed computation systems. Such systems must take into account several variables --like client demand, resource state and availability, and the competition among services—to provide decentralized and autonomous system adaptivity.

DELFIN: Self-adapting decentralized systems for the Future Internet

The DELFIN project is focused on the design of self-adapting decentralized systems for the Future Internet. The network of the future is facing serious challenges due to an enormous increase in traffic, computing power and a miriad of novel devices connected to the network. For this reason, a new generation of distributed systems must provide extreme scalability and adaptivity to variable node and network conditions. We aim to cover the whole feedback loop of adaptive systems including: sensing and analysis, control and self-regulation, and finally system adaptation and reaction.

CloudSpaces: Open Service Platform for the Next Generation of Personal Clouds

Funding

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EUR 4.011.303,-

In the following years, users will access their data from a variety of devices, operating systems and applications. The CloudSpaces project advocates for a paradigm shift from application-centric to person-centric models where users will retake the control of their information. CloudSpaces aims to create the next generation of open Personal Clouds using three main building blocks: CloudSpaces Share, CloudSpaces Storage and CloudSpaces Services.

Cloud4Comm: Servicios Cloud y redes comunitarias

The size, growth and scope of the Internet and the perception of the key role of infrastructures for access and services in the digital society has put under stress the architecture and protocols shifting from pure networking, to end-user oriented services: the Cloud. The aim of this project is to provide the means for communities of citizens in bootstrapping, running and expanding community-owned networks that provide community services organised as community clouds, key for the development and sustainability of the digital society. To achieve that aim the main objective is solving specific research challenges around:

1. Self-managing and scalable infrastructure services for the management and aggregation of a large number of widespread networking, storage and limited computing resources;

2. Distributed and persistent storage, computation and communication platform services to support and facilitate the design and operation of

3. Elastic, resilient and scalable service overlays and user-oriented services built over these underlying services, providing a good quality of experience at the lowest economic and environmental cost.

IOStack: Software-defined Storage for Big Data

Funding

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EUR 3.318.624,-

The main objective is to create IOStack: a Software-defined Storage toolkit for Big Data on top of the OpenStack platform. IOStack will enable efficient execution of virtualized analytics applications over virtualized storage resources thanks to flexible, automated, and low cost data management models based on software-defined storage (SDS).

SWEDGE: Software-Defined Edge Clouds

We envision an evolution in Cloud platforms from purely centralized data centers to more heterogeneous and distributed infrastructures integrating a myriad of devices in the edge of the Internet. On the one hand, there are growing user and enterprise concerns about trust, privacy, and autonomy that require taking the control of computing applications, data, and services away from a few central nodes (data centers) to the logical extremes (the edges) of the Internet. On the other hand, the proliferation of edge devices, increased connectivity and powerful wireless networks involve interesting opportunities for hybrid cloud services and networks in the extremes of the Internet.

The aim of this project is twofold: to provide the means for users, enterprises and institutions to retake the control of their digital resources (digital data, processing and transfer) and to deliver services to the edge such that data does not necessarily need to go beyond edge boundaries. We outline the two major research challenges:

1. Software defined controls and architectures to enable automated data management and protection of data (namely, software defined protection) for cloud repositories. Instead of relinquishing control over data, customers will have the chance to retake control, without losing the advantages of cloud processing.

2. Elastic, resilient and scalable service overlays and user-oriented cloud services built over open IP-based networks, providing a good quality of experience at the lowest economic and environmental cost. The result sought is empowering citizens and communities at the edge of Internet, to grasp the opportunity of digital participation by providing a digital ecosystem of services.